The invention relates to one-part viscous compositions which vulcanize or crosslink at room temperature in the presence of moisture to form cured rubbery or hard products. More particularly, the invention relates to vulcanizable polymers having a terminal trialkoxysilyl group.
Resin compositions comprising vulcanizable polymers having terminal alkoxysilyl groups are known. Early in their development the compositions were marketed as two part systems, one part containing a vulcanizable polymer and the other containing a crosslinking agent. U.S. Pat. No. 3,127,363 shows an example of such a two part composition.
More recently, one part room temperature vulcanizable compositions have been disclosed. Examples of such one part compositions can be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,035,016, 3,480,584 and 3,661,816. While the one part vulcanizable compositions are desired, since they eliminate the difficulties encountered in on-site mixing of the polymer with the crosslinking agent, they have been heretofore limited to use situations which allow prolonged periods of time for cure. Such a limitation has been dictated by present prior art crosslinking agents. These agents of necessity must be latent; i.e., they must be capable of being mixed with the vulcanizable polymers without causing appreciable crosslinking, yet must be capable of promoting crosslinking on exposure to the crosslinking conditions. Exposure to ambient atmosphere is the preferred crosslinking condition, thus most of the crosslinking agents are activated by atmospheric moisture.
Prior to the present invention, one part vulcanizable compositions have required as long as eighteen hours or longer to cure under ambient conditions. The compositions of the prior art, generally, do not provide a cure at room temperature in less than three hours.